


Recuperation

by severinne



Series: The Wind and Its Satellite [13]
Category: Star Trek (XI)
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-31
Updated: 2011-03-30
Packaged: 2017-10-17 10:06:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/severinne/pseuds/severinne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Enterprise makes its way home while McCoy struggles to do right by his injured lover and disenchanted best friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

_Acting Chief Medical Officer’s Log, Stardate 2253.51._

 _Lost two more crewmembers today. Lieutenant Sharma passed away during Gamma while recovering in post-op; I wasn’t there, but pulmonary failure is most likely given the original injuries. I… wasn’t there, because of another damned explosion in engineering. Six injured, two badly enough to find them beds in the secondary medical bay. We had to discharge Selek and Chau to find the space, tried to transfer them to the triage unit in the cargo bay but if they’re that determined to get back to work, so be it. They’re still far better off than Petty Officer Monroe… she died instantaneously in the blast. Even if I had gotten there sooner, there was nothing I could’ve done for her…_

 _Physically at least, the Vulcan survivors on board are stable enough, up and walking around the ship with that hollow look about them, like their hearts had been ripped right out of their bellies, though some might say it’s hard to tell with Vulcans. Only… well, I’ve never been a good liar so I don’t mind saying I’ve always wondered whether feeling ever survived in those folks at all but… anyway. Know better now. Hell, might’ve been a blessing in disguise if they’d gotten off so lucky with all that choosing not to feel bullshit. Not feeling sounds pretty damn good right about now if you ask me. Even if I wouldn’t know where to start…_

 _I just… I don’t know how…_

The medical alert chime from intensive care cut cleanly through the haze of McCoy’s hoarse voice. Taking a moment to press the heels of his hands hard into his eye sockets, he took a deep breath before mumbling the appropriate commands.

‘Computer, stop log recording. State cause of medical alert.’

 _Patient Pike, Christopher has regained consciousness in the intensive care unit. Heart rate 96bpm and rising, blood pressure–_

‘Stop.’ He sagged in his desk chair, his own exhausted heart kicking hard against his ribcage. _Chris._ Awake. Finally, but too soon at the same time.

McCoy steeled his nerves, reading bleakly over the transcription of his words glowing on his desk monitor. ‘Computer,’ he said, ‘erase Acting Chief Medical Officer’s Log.’

 _Acknowledged._ A steadier calm settled through McCoy’s tensed shoulders as he watched his words disappear, wiped clean to a blank nothing.

If only it were that easy.

\+ + +

McCoy delivered the news with his usual bluntness, no detail nor sympathy spared, but was unable to look his patient in the eye as he did so. Instead, he focused on the chalky skin above the loose collar of his blue surgical gown, speaking to the spidery red of a bruise from too many hypospray jabs hastily administered in the battle for this man’s survival.

‘So that’s it, then.’ Pike’s voice was bone-dry with defeat. ‘My legs are gone.’

‘I didn’t say that.’ The defensive clip of McCoy’s reply sharpened the dull fatigue of his drawling tongue. ‘There are therapies, procedures we can try once we get back to Starfleet Medical. All the nerve endings controlling your lower extremities should regain normal function in due course, but until the scar tissue around your spinal column has a chance to heal properly…’

‘You said _should_.’ Brittle disbelief glazed Pike’s pale blue eyes – and damn, they seemed so much paler than he remembered. ‘ _Should_ means _maybe not._. Stick to the facts, Doctor.’

McCoy repressed a pained flinch. ‘I _am_ giving you the facts,’ he replied tartly. ‘ _Captain._ So far, your prognosis for recovery is good.’

‘So far.’ Again, the echo of his words was damning. ‘How good? I want percentages here.’

‘The human body doesn’t work in _percentages_ , and I’m not some damn Vulcan.’ And there was no stopping himself from cringing this time at his own thoughtless words. He deserved that hurt, so he swallowed it down with the rest and moved on. ‘Trust me,’ he continued, hoping it didn’t sound desperate, ‘under the circumstances, you’re doing remarkably well.’

‘If not being able to walk is _remarkably well_ …’

‘Look,’ McCoy interrupted, patience splintering like an old oak bough after a lightning storm. ‘When Jim beamed back with you, you were on your feet, right?’

Pike frowned, but nodded stiffly. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘But–’

‘And I got your ass to my medical bay by helping you along _on your own damn feet_.’

‘But now I can’t…’

‘And do you think any of the surgeries I’ve performed over the last few days were intended to take away your ability to walk? Much less permanently?’ The anxious, almost plaintive edge in his voice was coming out too loud, too clear. ‘Do you think I would’ve done that to you?’

Quiet defeat drained the panic from Pike’s eyes, along with everything else. ‘No,’ he agreed dully. ‘No, of course not. You’re a good doctor, McCoy.’

‘Damn it.’ His own shoulders slumped in dismay. ‘I’m sorry, that was…’ He sighed, straightened up and turned away. ‘Apologies, Captain. I was way out of line. Won’t happen again, sir.’

He blinked rapidly at the biobed monitor located safely above Pike’s head, and nearly jumped at the warm fingers curling weakly around his wrist.

‘Leo…’

A harsh sound, something ugly between a laugh and a sob, broke McCoy’s tight throat. ‘Don’t you mean “Doctor”?’ he asked, aiming the question at Pike’s vital signs on the monitor.

‘No.’ Pike’s grip on his wrist tightened; the pad of a thumb rubbed over his thundering pulse with a tenderness that nearly stopped his heart. ‘Leo, look at me.’

He screwed his eyes shut, gave his head a shake. Finally, he opened his eyes and looked down again – not at his commanding officer, or his patient, but at his lover. He had the look of a man who had aged years in the space of a few days and the fading bruises on his face still made McCoy smolder with rage but thank all the angels in heaven, he was still alive. With a renewed rush of gratitude for that fact, McCoy attempted a smile that Pike tiredly returned.

‘You look terrible.’

Pike’s dry greeting pulled an involuntary chuckle from McCoy’s sore throat. ‘You’re one to talk,’ he replied. Professional distance forgotten, he allowed himself to trace the fine silver hair spreading from Pike’s temples back into cinnamon brown, further back than he remembered. ‘And you can’t expect me to keep my looks when you pull stunts like that. Took at least five years off my life.’

‘Yours and mine both.’ Though the pull of his grip was weak, McCoy let Pike drag his hand closer to plant a dry, chapped kiss on his knuckles. ‘I’m sorry I worried you. And…’ Pike sighed, rolling his eyes up to the ceiling. ‘Sorry for being such a bastard of a patient. Phil always said I was a nightmare in his sickbay, and he wasn’t wrong.’

‘I know. He told me the stories.’ McCoy smoothed the furrows of Pike’s brow with the pad of his thumb. ‘I’ve been told my bedside manner leaves something to be desired, so at least that makes us even.’

Pike dismissed his unspoken apology with a shake of his head. ‘It’s just… I’ve had enough of feeling powerless to last me a lifetime,’ he continued, the words undercut with a vulnerable quaver of truth that made McCoy ache anew for him. ‘I’ll do a lot better when I can get a proper report from Spock,’ he added with a wan smile that McCoy returned hesitantly. Now probably wasn’t the time to inform Pike that Jim was now acting as Captain.

‘Jim’s been asking to see you as well,’ McCoy replied instead, frowning at the biobed monitor as one of Pike’s neural readings peaked strangely. ‘But I’ve already told him he’ll have to wait.’

‘Jim…’ Pike repeated it vaguely, eyes sliding out of focus. ‘You… you brought him on board…’

McCoy frowned at the uncertain slowness of his words. ‘And you promoted him to first officer,’ he said warily.

‘I did,’ Pike agreed, eyes narrowing to an introspective squint. ‘It seemed a good idea at the time… no harm in it when I was ordering him to jump into Vulcan’s atmosphere in the same breath.’

McCoy shuddered, still queasy at the very thought. ‘Uh-huh.’

‘Shame he made it back.’

Pike said it under his breath, so quietly that McCoy didn’t fully process the words right away; he felt an icy horror chill his guts before it reached his brain.

‘He shouldn’t have been on board in the first place,’ Pike continued dully, brow furrowing. ‘Arrogant little shit keeps going after everything I’ve got… chasing every record I set at the Academy, exploiting my lover to sneak onto my ship. And I know that bastard wants to fuck you–’

He cut off his own words with a sharp gasp, and the disturbed dread in McCoy’s heart was nothing to the disgust flooding Pike’s eyes.

‘I… oh, God …’ He shuddered beneath his thin blanket, eyes pinching shut as he shook his head, far too violently for his delicate spinal column and McCoy’s comfort. Revulsion temporarily forgotten, he steadied Pike’s head with both hands pressed to either side of his face. His skin was clammy and damp beneath his palms.

‘Chris,’ he said firmly, urging his eyes to open through the desperation of his voice. ‘Chris, you need to calm down…’

‘I can’t… it’s just like…’ Glassy eyes flickered open, frantic with shame and panic. ‘The slug,’ he breathed, face crumpling. ‘That vile, fucking _slug_ … I thought you got it out of there…’

McCoy’s eyes widened, comprehension clicking with the biobed’s peculiar readings. ‘We did, but we couldn’t flush its toxins from your system, not without compromising the work I did to patch up your spinal nerve,’ he explained hurriedly, cursing himself for not having considered the consequences sooner. ‘None of the known antidotes are compatible with human biochemistry, so it seemed safer to let the effects wear off naturally, rather than–’

‘Sedate me, then,’ Pike interrupted coldly, eyes hardening past the lingering terror McCoy could still read there.

‘That’s not really ideal,’ he said hesitantly. ‘I need to monitor your neural responses in a waking state, and…’

‘I said, _sedate me_ , Doctor.’ A faint whine from the biobed indicated Pike’s heartbeat pitching dangerously high, a fact McCoy could read just as well in his heaving chest. ‘That’s an order. I’m still your commanding…’ He ground his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut, fingers clutching the edge of the biobed as he visibly fought to control his speech. McCoy watched, utterly heartbroken, as Pike opened his eyes again, all anger faded in a startling shift of emotions. ‘Leo, please…’

He nodded stiffly, allowed himself to hold Pike’s clenched hand for a moment before striding away to prep the sedative.

‘I’ll find a way to fix this, Chris,’ he promised softly, pressing the hypo home as gently as he knew how. A flicker of gratitude warmed his blue eyes, but the words that slipped from his dry lips were devastating.

‘You don’t know how to fix this…’ His eyes slipped shut; silence rang accusingly in McCoy’s ears. He tossed the spent hypo into the sanitizer with unnecessary force before dropping into the chair at Pike’s bedside, hands dangling uselessly between his knees.

That, McCoy thought darkly, was not the reunion he had had in mind.


	2. Recuperation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Enterprise makes its way home while McCoy struggles to do right by his injured lover and disenchanted best friend.

_The Captain didn’t so much as bat an eyelash when McCoy slipped into the turbolift, gliding discretely alongside that Vulcan from the hearing, a quietly focused Ensign in command gold and Jim, whose eyes flickered their confusion at him though his mouth remained shut, plush lips pressed with tension._

 _‘Medical bay,’ McCoy ordered the computer tersely once Pike had snapped his command for the shuttle deck. Pike’s mouth wasn’t so tight as Jim’s; all his anxiety rested in his shoulders, in the stern lines gathered at the corners of his suddenly cold eyes. His hands were clasped at the small of his back, concealing a faint tremor that passed into McCoy’s fingertips when he dared – heart hammering, but face blank – to reach sideways and glance a worrying touch over his wrist._

 _If anything, Pike stiffened further at the physical contact so McCoy snatched his hand away, already cursing himself for a sentimental fool. The stoic silence in the lift was oppressive, suffocating save for that crazy Romulan’s threats still ringing in McCoy’s ears and how dare that bastard draw out Chris’ name like that, the lilting_ Christopher _that had made McCoy’s blood run cold._

 _The turbolift drew to a stop; the doors hissed open to reveal a medical bay descending into rapid chaos. Drawing a deep breath that miraculously settled his own faltering professionalism in place, McCoy offered a nod and half a grim smile to Jim before exiting the lift, so swiftly that he barely registered the fleeting passage of fingers around his hand, the weight of something small and warm tucking itself into his palm. Distractedly, feet still moving on autopilot, he glanced down into his hand and sucked in a startled gasp._

 _Chris’ old Academy ring, heavy and already growing cold, gleamed dully back at him._

 _He spun around, and the lift doors closed but not before he caught the anguished apology in Pike’s darkening blue eyes. A brief allowance of regret, and he was gone._

 _Gone._

McCoy twisted the ring around his left pinky with a reflective frown. Chris had always worn this ring on the third finger of his right hand, but it was too small to fit on any but his smallest finger. He had never noticed before how much larger his hands were than Pike’s, how much smaller Pike’s hands were compared to his. Looking at the pale shape of that hand resting peacefully now on top of the thermal sheet, the difference was painfully obvious.

He hated himself for never noticing sooner. In their three years together, he had worshipped and adored Pike’s strength while remaining stupidly blind to the fine and frail details that made the man complete. Now, with every vulnerable inch of Pike’s body laid before him, McCoy couldn’t stop taking it all in like he might never see it again.

Beneath his greedy gaze, a long and slender finger twitched. A faint alert beeped once from Pike’s biobed and McCoy raised his head, his stomach knotting in anticipation at the sight of fluttering eyelashes.

‘Hello, again.’ He aimed for a light tone, even as he struggled to calculate the time it had taken for the sedative to wear off; surely it was too soon for Pike to be awake again.

‘Hey.’ Bleary blue eyes squinted at him, adjusting to the light. ‘Have you been there this whole time?’

McCoy shrugged. ‘How you feeling?’

Pike blinked slowly as he fumbled for an answer. ‘Fuzzy,’ he decided finally, the twist of his mouth revealing how dissatisfied he was with that description. ‘Strange,’ he added. ‘Like a passenger in a hovercar and the bastard driving won’t even let me choose the music.’

The imagery brought a wistful smile to McCoy’s face; Pike had always insisted on piloting all of their excursions out of San Francisco. ‘Could be another side effect of the slug’s venom,’ he murmured, thinking out loud. ‘Not that there are all that many studies to go on for this sort of thing. Any other symptoms I should know about? Are you feeling any pain, or discomfort…?’

After an even longer pause and a stiff stretch of his back and shoulders, Pike sighed, casting a disdainful glance down the length of his prone body. ‘Some discomfort, yes.’

McCoy followed his gaze and hitched an eyebrow at the slight tenting of the blanket across Pike’s hips. ‘That doesn’t seem like such a bad development,’ he remarked, looking back to Pike’s face with a smile that faded quickly against his discomfited frown. ‘Unless it really is causing any unusual sensations, or…?’

‘No, no, feels normal enough,’ Pike assured quickly, shaking his head. ‘Too normal… I feel… restless.’

‘Restless makes sense.’ McCoy shifted in his chair, tongue darting over his dry lips as he shot another glance at the telltale bulge beneath the sheets, saw it twitch and harden further beneath his gaze. ‘If you took it slow,’ he offered, soft and discrete, ‘there wouldn’t be any harm in indulging…’ He cleared his throat nervously; his Chris had never failed to inspire all manner of dirty suggestions from his tongue in the bedroom, but here and now, as doctor and patient, he cringed away from crossing some forbidden boundary. ‘If you wanted some privacy…’

Pike’s eyes widened then rapidly narrowed. ‘I’d rather have some help than some privacy,’ he said, deliberate and slow like McCoy had turned exactly as stupid as he felt.

‘Oh. Right.’ Stifling any lingering reservations, he rose from his chair and settled tentatively on the edge of the biobed, giving Pike’s vital signs a last precautionary glance before skimming his hand down his body, eye fixed to the glint of Pike’s ring on his finger as his palm settled gently over the swelling of the bed sheet.

‘Wait.’ Pike’s rasping voice snapped McCoy’s concerned eyes back upward. His patient glared back at him, quietly fierce. ‘Strip.’

‘What?’ He cast a nervous eye over his shoulder at the partition separating the intensive care unit from the rest of the secondary sickbay. Gamma shift had left the room beyond dark and quiet for now, but there was no way of knowing who might interrupt them.

‘I said, strip,’ Pike repeated sternly. ‘Clothes off, then you can suck me off.’

McCoy huffed faint, incredulous laugh. ‘Are you insane?’ he sputtered. ‘Chris…’

‘ _Captain._ ’

His breath caught in his throat as surely as though Pike had seized his windpipe with his bare hands at his harsh command. Any amusement dead, he straightened away from the biobed. ‘No,’ he protested, eyes narrowing. ‘No way. That’s not how this works, Chris.’

‘Really.’ The disdain in Pike’s voice was unmistakable; it flayed McCoy down to the bone. ‘You didn’t have any problem taking orders before coming on board my ship with your little boyfriend in tow.’

‘Don’t drag Jim into this,’ he hissed, unable to speak any louder around the shape of his shock growing to a solid weight in his lungs. ‘This isn’t about him, this is about you bringing…’ A flush crept into McCoy’s face as he stumbled for the words, ‘…those _things_ onto this ship. Into _my_ sickbay.’

‘Those _things_.’ The hitch of Pike’s eyebrow was unimpressed. ‘You mean those things I do for you that make you come harder than you ever have in your life. Unless that was all an act,’ he added, a thread of genuine doubt shading his disgust.

‘You know it wasn’t an act,’ he argued impatiently, mentally reeling as the conversation slipped rapidly from his grasp. ‘But there’s a time and a place for that, and right now–’

‘And you always planned to call it off once I became your superior officer?’ An ugly smirk pulled at Pike’s pale lips. ‘Guess having an authority figure in the bedroom is one thing, but obeying a direct order…’

‘It’s not a problem when it’s an order worth following.’ He flinched at Pike’s disbelieving laugh. ‘Damn it, Chris, you know better than this.’

‘Do I? I’m not the one who’s been getting off to the sound of Kirk masturbating for fuck knows how long now,’ Pike spat bitterly.

McCoy flushed with embarrassment and rage, unprepared to have such a confidence, freely given during such an intimate moment, flung so callously back in his face. Not now, not like this. ‘I don’t want Jim, damn it,’ he snarled. ‘I want _you._ ’

‘Except for the part where you don’t want to touch me? Sure you do.’ Hollowed-out eyes flashed accusingly up at him. ‘Last I checked, you’re not the one with truth serum running through his veins. Wonder which one of us is the liar here?’

‘I’m _not_ lying!’ He shouted it defiantly: mindless of Gamma shift outside, anger and shame escalating wildly to know his protest was an incomplete version of the truth.

‘Tell you what,’ Pike carried on ruthlessly, ‘why don’t _you_ swallow down that slug, and try saying it again?’ He jerked his head sideways to where the Centaurian slug hovered dead in its portable stasis field on a nearby cart. ‘Maybe then I could believe your bullshit.’

‘ _My_ bullshit?’ McCoy barked a rough laugh. ‘Where the hell do you get off–’

‘And what is that fucking thing doing here in the first place?’ Perversely, he was relieved that Pike cut him off before his reckless tongue went any further. ‘You keeping it in here to prove a point?’

‘Hardly,’ he sniffed, throwing his own glare back at the ugly specimen. ‘I’d have sent it to the medical labs, see, but they got destroyed along with the rest of the primary medical bay thanks to your damn cowboy antics trying to fight off Nero’s ship.’

‘My cowboy antics,’ Pike retorted coldly, ‘are the only reason you’re still alive. You should be fucking grateful.’

McCoy raised an eyebrow. ‘What, grateful for this clusterfuck of a mess? You gonna bend me over and spank me if I’m not, _Captain_?’

A savage and complicated fury rushed like a storm across Pike’s face before he visibly contained himself back within an icy shell. ‘Go,’ he snapped, head jerking towards the door. ‘Get out of here, and take that fucking thing with you.’

McCoy spun on his heel, snatched up the stasis jar far more violently than what was strictly sensible. His heart pounded a destructive tattoo in his chest as he made for the door, pushing anger through his blood faster than he could contain it; with a final, cruel twist of arrogance, he looked back at Pike.

‘If you’re so goddamn high and mighty and truthful,’ he drawled dangerously, ‘you look me in the eye and tell me you don’t wanna fuck Jim.’

Pike leveled a dark glare at him fit to swallow a supernova. ‘Fuck you,’ he growled.

McCoy smirked coldly. ‘That’s what I thought.’

He ignored a corpsman’s startled glance as he burst from intensive care and charged blindly past the crowded banks of biobeds towards the CMO’s office, stasis jar clutched close to his chest in a white-knuckled grip. He slammed it down on his desk and was already entering the sequence to release the stasis field and crush the dead thing to dust with his bare hands before reason settled its numb white fog over his temper. With a shaky exhale, he drew his trembling hand away and left the specimen waiting on his desk as he retreated one door further into the narrow berth tucked behind the office.

With the lights out, the CMO’s sleeping cabin felt like the closet where he used to hide in his childhood bedroom back in Georgia. This room was scarcely larger than that, designed solely for the narrow bunk that afforded the CMO a temporary resting place when regular patient supervision was needed. McCoy sank down on the edge of the unmade bunk, fingers curling on the edges of the stiff mattress.

Right now, he had a lot of patients in need of supervision, more patients than Pike, more than would fit in the secondary sickbay that was left to him. And those for whom he could do nothing more scarcely fit within what was left of this battered tin can. The thought of Vulcan’s survivors, the countless many that would never be enough, had plagued him the first time Chapel had attempted to send him to the CMO’s designated quarters for sleep. Those were Dr. Puri’s rooms, not his own, and there was space enough for a family of Vulcan refugees to rest comfortably. He had made the arrangements, and returned to work without the slightest inclination to rest.

Another full shift rotation had passed before McCoy was sent off again, this time to the quarters originally assigned to him as senior medical officer. Again, it had been too much empty space, but more than enough to give another family of three survivors a shred of the dignity they clearly held so dear.

After that, his staff gave up on trying to make him leave. There was so much work to be done, and the idea of leaving it behind for any length of time… the idea of leaving Chris behind…

The human body had its needs, though, so McCoy let himself fall sideways, head thumping shy of the thin pillow as he drew his legs up to curl stiffly on the mattress, nerves too frayed by too many emergency calls to bother kicking off his boots. Instead, he focused on restoring the steady beat of his heart through sheer force of will, staring myopically with the one eye not buried in his blanket at the limp and useless shape his hand made on the bed.

The human body had its needs, some more important than others. Intellectually, McCoy knew he needed to rest, knew that coffee and stimulant shots would only extend his usefulness so far, and certainly not far enough to help Pike, who needed his own rest but craved the ability to act and feel and take command far more.

They were on opposing trajectories now, him and Pike, and the tangle his mind made as it struggled to bring their needs back around to each other twisted itself into endless circles that set his makeshift closet spinning nauseously around the dubious comfort of his bunk.

It was no good. With a bracing inhalation, he pushed back up to his feet.

The lights flooding the medical bay with a sick simulation of morning told McCoy that the ship had rotated out of Gamma to Alpha shift during his wide-eyed hibernation. He had lingered in his bunk longer than he thought, surely long enough to pass for proper rest. He offered a reassuring nod to Chapel’s narrow-eyed glance as she passed him a PADD and talked him through the progress of their patients both in sickbay and out. There were too many people licking their wounds back in their own quarters: or worse, while back on full active duty. The sheer number of them made his insides lurch but he counted himself lucky to have a team of nurses capable of tracking their progress and focused instead on the problems he could actually solve in the here and now.

He tried not to focus on the problem waiting for him in the intensive care unit, but on his fifth or seventh glance towards that frosted partition his eyes widened at the sight of a black-clad figure moving at a discrete lope through the flurry of white-clad medical staff.

‘Jim,’ he called out, too much relief seeping into his voice. He excused Chapel with a gesture, all his attention riveted by the best friend he hadn’t clapped eyes on for heavens alone knew how many days. ‘And here I thought I’d have to order you down here.’

‘What?’ Jim blinked up at him, his usual snappy responses conspicuously absent. McCoy’s brow furrowed suspiciously.

‘And not a moment too soon,’ he muttered. ‘Hop up.’ He patted the exam table at his side, frown deepening when Jim backed up with dawning realization.

‘Oh, no… er, that’s not why I’m…’ He swallowed, rubbing surreptitiously at his bruised neck. ‘I’m here to see Captain Pike, actually. He wants a full debriefing.’

‘What the hell…?’ McCoy’s shot a glance back at Pike’s semi-private bay. ‘He isn’t cleared for duty yet,’ he blurted out abruptly.

‘Is he cleared for a quiet conversation?’

McCoy bristled at the innocent widening of Jim’s bloodshot eyes, battling down the urge to protectively intercede his body between his best friend and his lover’s sickbed. ‘He might be,’ he agreed grudgingly, unable to lie directly to Jim’s face. ‘So long as it’s properly quiet. And quick.’

‘Sure.’ Jim quirked a tired smile. ‘Don’t worry, Bones, I’m not gonna drag him off to take over the Captain’s chair.’

‘Too damn right.’ Crossing his arms, McCoy swept an assessing glance over Jim’s lean frame, reading the thrum of nervous energy in his clenched fists and stiff shoulders. ‘Though you might want to let that green-blooded first officer of yours have a turn at the fancy chair, kid. You look horrible.’

A defensive twitch contorted Jim’s face before it smoothed out to a bland sort of indifference. ‘You’re not looking so hot, either,’ he threw back, head cocking itself to the side with a brazen challenge that set McCoy instinctively on edge.

‘Doesn’t damn well matter how I look,’ he grumbled, glancing momentarily back at the partition wall. ‘What does matter,’ he continued, more firmly and clearly, ‘is that you’re dead on your feet. So how about I give you a once over, and then you can have that chat with Captain Pike once I’m sure you won’t pass out into his lap.’

Jim shook his head. ‘Captain’s orders, Bones. _Both_ Captains,’ he added with a curl of his lip. ‘You don’t get to make deals.’

Anger burned at the tip of McCoy’s tongue, too recklessly eager to point out that he could make all the deals he liked or else relieve Jim of duty if it damn well came to that. But he knew the stubborn edge in Jim’s eyes, knew this wasn’t the time to throw down ultimatums. ‘Look, Jim,’ he sighed, arms dropping to his sides, ‘just let me take care of you first.’

The look Jim threw at him was dark, forbidding. ‘A little late for that, isn’t it?’

His eyes widened at the raw venom in Jim’s rough voice. ‘What the hell does that mean?’ he shot back.

‘It means you had your chance to have my back, and you blew it.’

McCoy swallowed tightly, shaking off the chill of Jim’s accusation. ‘I didn’t,’ he protested hoarsely. ‘I brought you onto this damn ship, Jim, I…’

‘You sat back and watched while Spock jettisoned me onto Delta Vega,’ Jim interrupted, blue eyes burning hot enough to sear McCoy’s guilty conscience. ‘You may not think I’m good enough to serve as Captain of this ship,’ he hushed, ‘but so long as that’s the case, you’re just gonna have to deal with it. Now. Step aside, Doctor.’

McCoy squeezed his tired hands into fists at his sides as Jim brushed carelessly past him and disappeared into Pike’s room. Hearing the people he most cared about use his title like a denial or a curse was starting to wear thin. With a last glance at intensive care’s opaque barrier, he dragged himself back to Chapel’s side, Jim’s parting words still reverberating against the inside of his skull.

That Jim resented his silence in the face of Spock’s overreacting bit of _logic_ came as no surprise; the memory of Jim’s stunned blue eyes stabbing betrayal straight at him was one of the few things that had pierced McCoy’s numb withdrawal during the destruction of Vulcan and their wild pursuit of the Narada. In that moment, right before Jim’s hurt had flared into reckless defiance, McCoy had been briefly shaken out of the fog of horror that had enveloped him ever since Pike had relinquished his command to the whims of a madman.

And not long after his best friend had been shot into the same void of space that had already stolen his lover, McCoy had realized how downright fucking useless he was to them both. It was Jim who had rescued Pike from that Romulan monstrosity, Jim who had somehow rescued his own marooned ass off Delta Vega and found a replacement engineer in the bargain. Meanwhile, McCoy had bled out fatalities faster than the Mississippi and repressed unshed tears with an even pricklier attitude than usual and did absolutely _nothing._

When he caught a glimpse of Jim slipping out of the intensive care unit some indeterminate time later, he didn’t bother with calling out or asking forgiveness. A mumbled order sent one of his junior nurses chasing after him with a medkit over her shoulder, and McCoy bitterly hoped Jim would at least appreciate the attractive company to go with his check-up.

His rounds of the current patients nearly completed, there was no delaying the inevitable any longer. After a pass of his hands through the sanitizer unit and a futile attempt to smooth his uniform and his hair, McCoy drew a steadying breath and crossed the barrier of Pike’s room.

Unsurprisingly, the captain looked grey and drawn in the harsh white light of room, every line of his face struck into staggering relief around the tightness of his eyes and mouth. His pale eyes slid away from the ceiling to acknowledge McCoy’s arrival with a sidelong glance that he shamefully dodged in favour of feigning detached professionalism over the biobed’s monitor.

‘I’m sorry.’

McCoy nearly jumped out of his skin at the rasp of Pike’s voice breaking the silence of his own struggle for an apology. He glanced down into Pike’s solemn face, swallowed tightly and nodded.

‘I’m sorry, too, darling,’ he murmured.

Pike’s gaze flicked back to the ceiling, his exchange of apologies seemingly complete. ‘So Kirk’s acting captain now.’

‘That’s what happens when you promote the tenacious bastard to first officer,’ he replied, with nowhere near enough light in his voice to make the teasing remark work quite right. ‘Give him an inch…’

Pike smirked humourlessly. ‘Point taken.’

‘I…’ McCoy cleared his throat, rested a tentative hand on the edge of the biobed. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before,’ he added grudgingly. ‘I didn’t think it appropriate to get you all worked up over the ship and the crew so soon after surgery…’

‘You made what you thought was the right call as CMO. I understand that.’

McCoy ran an anxious thumb over his lower lip, staring hard at Pike over the dull glint of the ring on his finger. Pike’s tone was level, reasonable, and impossible to read. ‘So, what did you need to talk to Jim about?’

‘You’ll find out if it matters,’ he replied cryptically, his voice still infuriatingly flat.

‘What does that mean?’

An empty shrug answered him.

‘Damn it, Chris.’ His evasiveness, his inability to speak a simple truth, told McCoy that it had been no normal debriefing. A sickening echo of the accusations Pike had hurled at him earlier came thundering back through his mind. ‘What did you say to him?’

Pike’s worn features remained blank, his eyes withdrawn. McCoy growled, irrational panic gripping his insides, and leaned down with both hands braced to either side of Pike’s body.

‘Tell me!’ he snarled, teeth bared.

If he hadn’t been hovering so close, he might have missed it, but McCoy knew that face and those eyes too well now, and the fleeting flash of terror was as unmistakable as it was wrong. His Chris had never looked so afraid, so helpless, and it wasn’t until a thin veil of indifference had shuttered over his expression again that McCoy’s distracted mind was able to piece it back together. The Narada. Nero. The Centaurian slug…

He promptly felt like the lowest form of shit.

‘Chris,’ he attempted weakly, stepping cautiously backward as Pike’s defensive withdrawal grew stonier, colder. ‘I’m sorry… I didn’t mean…’

‘That will be all, Doctor.’

Again, _Doctor._ As if he passed as anything of the sort anymore. He stared bleakly at Pike, saw the tight refusal in his face but also the tremulous frustration in his clenching hands at his sides. ‘Please,’ he begged, pride and jealousy doused by simple despair. ‘I don’t need to know… I’m sorry, Chris, but please don’t…’

‘I said, that will be all.’ Though his voice broke slightly at its louder pitch, Pike was outwardly resolute, deadened gaze fixed to the ceiling. ‘You’re dismissed.’

As he turned and left the room, McCoy at least understood why Pike had sent him off so abruptly. He, too, didn’t want the other man to see him fall apart.

Blinking rapidly around the medical bay, McCoy quickly realized that he didn’t want his staff and patients to see such a miserable thing either. Instead, he huddled himself against the nearest replicator and took his time ordering a much-needed cup of coffee. Black, triple-sweet.

The first sip did nothing to settle the sickness in his gut or the hot prickling behind his eyelids. Keeping his back turned to the rest of the sickbay, he rested his forehead against the soothing cold of the computer console above the replicator slot, letting its chill balance out the searing heat of the cup clasped between his hands.

 _Unable to recognize entry._

He flinched at the electronic chirp of the computer’s voice. ‘Damn it,’ he growled softly, creaking an eye open to glare balefully at the entry console against his face. ‘Disregard, you heartless piece of crap.’

 _Acknowledged._

A shudder of twisted amusement shook his shoulders. ‘Too damn right,’ he muttered, forcing his face off the console in order to attempt a second taste of his coffee. As much as the idea made him ill, he wished it were as easy as that, to press his forehead to the computer and have it understand exactly what he needed. He wished it had the power to see it done. He wished…

He swallowed, cringed at the burn of hot liquid against his tonsils. ‘Computer,’ he rasped, opening his eyes. ‘Show me the location of laboratory facilities still intact on this god-forsaken ship.’

Miraculously, a list appeared before his eyes, containing more than one result. McCoy scanned it feverishly, checked a few options against ship inventory and crew activity, and smiled grimly with a newfound sense of satisfaction.

All he needed was that damned miserable slug.

Safely sequestered at the innermost core of the ship, the xenobiology laboratories were disturbingly intact. The safety protocols set in place to prevent biohazards from contaminating the rest of the ship worked just as well to keep the messy chaos of battle from tainting its pristine cubicles. McCoy staggered to a stop in xenobiology’s entrance chamber, taking in the tidy row of clear-walled labs beyond their separate sealed doors and feeling like a contaminant himself compared to all this clean and perfect science.

He shivered away the discomfort and keyed his code into the nearest door. Cool and calm was exactly the approach he needed to take now that his usual hot-headedness had gotten him nowhere.

And maybe this was a fool’s errand, but if there was one thing he could still know for certain, it was that slicing that Centaurian slug into slivers and plucking out its venom sac felt unbelievably good.

Dissecting the parasite was the easiest work that lay ahead of him, and in spite of the clinical gleam of the too-bright room and shining steel instruments beneath his hands, McCoy’s mind wandered away from the simple mechanisms of scanning anatomical cross-sections and breaking down samples of the venom into its composite parts. Even as time slipped past him unnoticed, he struggled to calculate the time Jim had taken to exchange how many unknown words with Pike. He wondered if Chris had still been greedy for touch.

He wondered if Jim had been more inclined to indulge his Captain where McCoy had refused.

He wondered if Jim gave better head than he did. He suspected he knew the answer to that question already, and it made his hands tremble with anger.

‘Dr. McCoy.’

The low, intrusive voice startled McCoy out of his concentration; he jumped in his seat, knocked the fine focus of his microscopic sensor out of alignment, and cursed under his breath. ‘God _damn it_.’ He leaned into the eyepiece again and groaned in frustration. ‘You have any idea how long it took me to set up this test?’ he spat, pushing away from the lab bench with a scathing glare at his unannounced visitor.

Spock raised an eyebrow. ‘No, I do not. I apologize for disturbing you,’ he said levelly, sounding nothing of the sort. ‘Do you require assistance recalibrating your instruments?’

‘The hell I do,’ he muttered, turning back to the scope and thumbing angrily at the control pad. The click of boot heels signaled Spock coming nearer and he hunched defensively over his work as though his body was enough to shield it from any Vulcan’s scrutiny. ‘You got a reason for interrupting me, Commander?’

‘Of course.’ Spock drew to a stop somewhere behind McCoy’s left shoulder, just close enough to make his nerves twitch in protest. ‘You have neglected to file departmental reports for the last two rotations. And while I understand that you inherited the duties of Chief Medical Officer under duress, regulations still require–’

‘I filed the damn reports,’ McCoy interrupted impatiently, fingers still dancing tightly over his instruments. He very nearly had the miserable slide back in focus. ‘I cleared the latest batch yesterday.’

A long pause almost had McCoy convinced he had won the last word on that one. Then: ‘You are mistaken, Doctor. Your last report was received four days ago.’

His tired spine stiffened a notch tighter at the dire possibility before McCoy could help himself. ‘That can’t be right,’ he muttered, the eyepiece gouging harder against the bone of his superciliary arch. ‘It was just yesterday.’

This time, the silence was broken by an exhalation of slow, thoughtful breath that McCoy knew the Vulcan would never describe as something so crass as a sigh. ‘Computer,’ Spock said, ‘state the time elapsed since Medical logged an official status report to ship’s records.’

 _Time elapsed since last report is four days, three hours and twenty-nine minutes._

Humiliation burning beneath his skin, he forced his tone to remain steady as he finally pushed away from his microscope. ‘Figures you got the damn computer to take your side,’ he muttered darkly as he turned on his stool to face the impassive Vulcan, who merely arched his insufferable eyebrow in return.

‘I assure you, the ship’s computer is impartial to any crew disagreements. It merely reports the facts as they can be confirmed.’

‘Exactly my point.’ He scowled and crossed his arms. ‘Fine. You both win. I’ll get my reports uploaded as soon as I can. Happy now?’

‘Happy… would be an inaccurate description of my present condition,’ Spock said, after a hesitation that hovered long enough to lance another barb of guilt into McCoy’s chest. ‘On the contrary, I find myself concerned by the difficulties you appear to be facing under these circumstances.’

Unlike Spock, McCoy took no issue with calling a sigh a sigh. ‘I swear, on all the twisted heavens around us, that if you came down here and interrupted my work for another lousy pep talk about my _difficulties_ coping with Jim’s behaviour…’

‘If you are experiencing difficulties with Acting Captain Kirk, I would of course take them under advisement–’

‘Sure, take them by the throat, no doubt.’

‘But I was intending to inquire into your fitness to perform your duties where the treatment of Captain Pike’s injuries is concerned.’

McCoy choked down several court-martial-worthy curses. ‘Are you questioning my ability to treat my damn patients?’

‘Not at all, Doctor,’ Spock replied plainly. ‘But we both know that regulations would normally absolve you of the responsibility of performing surgery on an intimate partner, and under normal circumstances, had Dr. Puri survived our initial encounter with Nero, he could have taken charge of the Captain’s care without placing you in–’

‘Stop that.’ McCoy cut him off numbly before Spock could continue; the very idea that someone else, that _Spock_ of all people knew about him and Pike was so shocking that it was still taking time to find a place in the scrambled mess of his conscious mind. He sagged back against the hard edge of the lab table, blinking rapidly up at the impassive Vulcan. ‘How… how the hell d’you…’

‘As Captain Pike’s first officer, it is my duty to be mindful of any and all crew dynamics that may impact his command. As you and the Captain share a physical and emotional bond, this information–’

‘That _information_ ,’ he interrupted loudly, a hint of hysteria clawing beneath the surface, ‘is not part of official Starfleet records. So how the flying fuck do you know about us?’ Mouth dry, he gaped disbelievingly into Spock’s barely bemused face. ‘Did Chris… did he tell you…?’

‘Not in words, as such… no.’ And now McCoy figured he had to be going mad, because Spock looked downright awkward now, dark eyes shifting resolutely aside. ‘Human mannerisms, however, manifest predictable patterns of response. There were occasions, when your name would arise during review of the crew manifest, that indicated the extent of the Captain’s… affections.’

Despite the absurdity of the situation, and the aching chasm left by the echo of _his_ existence in the room, McCoy felt a trickle of warm pleasure slip down his belly like a bracing shot of bourbon. ‘So why the hell am I getting the tea and sympathy routine instead of the Starfleet-issued slap on the wrist?’ he asked flatly. ‘I’d have thought regs wouldn’t want me here at all.’

‘Starfleet regulations do not explicitly forbid such a relationship, given your respective ranks and responsibilities,’ Spock said, still staring somewhere left of McCoy’s shoulder, ‘and your academic performance clearly demonstrates the validity of your posting as a senior medical officer beyond any logical reproach. Also…’ A flicker of hesitation pulled at Spock’s upswept brows. ‘Any attempt on my part to condemn your personal relationship with a member of this crew would be, in a word, hypocritical.’

McCoy stared, mouth agape as he untangled the god-honest truth from all its Vulcan window dressing and slipped that knowledge neatly alongside scraps of memory from the bridge – the vague visual snapshot of tidy red trailing after blue, of gazes held longer than was strictly… logical.

Though it pulled at muscles that had gone unused for days, McCoy grinned widely. ‘Well I’ll be damned,’ he drawled. ‘Miss Uhura? Really?’

Spock’s distant eyes snapped to attention. ‘Indeed.’

‘Unbelievable.’ He smothered a cynical snort of laughter in the lazy drag of his palm over his face. Briefly, he wondered if Jim knew about this before he remembered to shove the kid out of his mind altogether.

‘You doubt your own hypothesis?’

McCoy glanced through his fingers at Spock’s uncertain expression. Some childish part of him was eager to pluck at the first threads of emotion he saw in that wary look, but then again this was a man, a Starfleet officer and a superior who had just acknowledged his relationship with Chris without using the words ‘court martial’ or ‘careerist whore’ in the same sentence. It would be damned ungenerous to tease.

Plus, he had already seen firsthand what came of poking at this one’s emotions.

‘Forget it,’ he sighed at last, letting his hand drop to his thigh. ‘She’s a fine, proper young lady,’ he said honestly. ‘You just make sure you treat her right.’

After a long, searching gaze, Spock nodded his agreement. ‘I aim to do so in all respects,’ he replied. ‘As I am sure you will where the Captain is concerned.’

As the cubicle door hissed shut, McCoy tried to convince himself that the parting shot had not been intended as such, but his own conscience and his sneaking suspicions about the Vulcan’s dubious neutrality made him think otherwise.

‘Damn it,’ he muttered, turning back to his work. Even if he had been a less than attentive lover during this whole mess, the snide Vulcan bastard had a point – he could do a lot more with concentration and science than he could with weeping over his losses.

And Spock didn’t have the monopoly of emotional compromise around here. Necessity had kept the worrying thought held firmly in check for as long as he needed to get the job done, but now the truth crept down his spine and settled like an accusing stone deep in his belly.

He never should have been allowed to operate on Pike.

If things had gone differently, if Dr. Puri had survived the destruction of the primary medical bay, he could have avoided the breach of ethics that had sent his fingers tangling into the spinal cord of his lover. But he was the only surgeon left on the whole damned ship, and no one else even recognized what was happening right under their noses. When McCoy had closed the incision and left the post-op to the rest of his team, they no doubt presumed his sudden onset of shaking was down to exhaustion and stress, nothing more.

If a tree fell in the woods and no one was there to hear it, did it still make a sound when it crushed a man to death?

‘Doctor?’

McCoy shook his head distractedly, blinked back up at Nurse Chapel with no small amount of shame. He had been staring blankly at her report of the last four hours of post-operative treatment without so much as a pat on the back for all her hard work.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered hoarsely. McCoy forced himself to sit a little straighter in his office chair, anxiously wondering how long he had been sat behind this desk in the first place.

‘There’s also Captain Pike.’ Chapel handed over the last PADD in her arsenal. ‘He’s requested transfer to his quarters for the remainder of our journey back to Earth.’

An icy apprehension gripped his gut, and he prided his hands on not shaking as he retrieved the read-out of Pike’s most recent scans. Blood pressure was still higher than McCoy liked to see, but the rest of his vitals had leveled out as well as could be expected pending further treatment at Starfleet Medical. He frowned at each minor deviation, trying to add them up to make justification enough to keep Pike safely within his walls before shaking his head in disgust at his own unprofessional bias.

Setting the PADD down on the desk, he leaned back and considered Chapel with weary eyes. He remembered little about her from the Academy, but her discrete efficiency and attentive calm over the last few days were making a good impression on him. ‘Nurse Chapel…’ he started tentatively, pausing when she shook her head with a rueful smile.

‘Christine, if you like,’ she offered, her own exhaustion plain. ‘Most of my friends call me Chris.’

Something hard stuck in his throat, either sad laughter or slightly mad tears. ‘What do you think we should do?’ he asked instead, gesturing at Pike’s read-outs.

If she was surprised at the question, she only showed it for the smallest part of a second. McCoy decided that he really did like her after all. ‘The Captain has a point,’ she offered bluntly, crossing her arms. ‘We’ve done all we can for him until we arrive at Starfleet Medical. Analgesics can be administered just as well in his quarters as here, and goodness knows we could use the bed if he doesn’t want it.’

Her opinion was sound and to the point; still, McCoy hesitated. ‘Without supervision, he’s likely to try moving about by his own fool self before he’s ready,’ he mused sullenly. ‘You know what captains are like,’ he added quickly at her curiously arched eyebrow.

‘We have mobility chairs in inventory,’ Chapel reasoned. ‘His upper body strength can handle that much. If he tries pushing it any further…’ She shrugged, eyes flashing with a wicked glint common in her profession. ‘Consider it a lesson learned.’

McCoy smirked back, though his heart wasn’t behind it. He knew Pike would hate the chair, even if it would be an improvement on his current bed-ridden condition. ‘Fair enough,’ he nodded, tapping his approval on the request and pushing the PADD away in a single motion. ‘Prepare Captain Pike for transfer to quarters and add him to the ship-wide nursing rotation. One visit per shift at the very least, two if we can spare it.’

‘Of course, Doctor.’ Chapel collected the PADD with the rest of medical’s updated reports. ‘Shall I notify you when the Captain is ready for transfer?’

‘No.’ He shook his head as vigorously as the suddenly stiffened bones of his neck would allow. ‘No,’ he repeated, softer than before. ‘That’s alright, I’m sure you can handle it just fine.’

McCoy ignored Chapel’s searching look as she nodded her way out, preferring instead to stare at the surprising emptiness of the desk’s surface. With reports caught up and no new catastrophes flooding his medical bay, a forgotten feeling of peace was drifting around his consciousness, setting the world blurring into white along the furthest reaches of his vision. He sagged back in his chair, rolled his head aside to consider the door leading to his private bunk, then clamped his eyes shut with a sudden wave of nausea.

 _Not yet._

When he settled at his cluttered xenobiology station among its silent neighbours, McCoy realized with a pang of irritation that he had already exhausted all the established knowledge surrounding Centaurian slug toxicity. With no more soothingly mechanical tasks to perform or routine tests to attempt, the daunting need to arrive at something entirely different lay ahead of him. He stared bleakly at the slowly rotating chemical markers on his screen, toying absently with the ring on his smallest finger until his coffee turned cold and his eyes watered with exhaustion.

Defeated, he returned to medical and, giving in to a nose-twitching hunch that had hit him in the turbolift, helped himself to a sonic shower and a fresh uniform before collapsing onto his bunk behind the CMO office. He dragged the thin pillow over his face and used the weight of his dead arm to press it tight over his eyes, jaw clenched with frustration at his failure. Even with his vision blinded by the pillow, molecular models of that damned venom twisted across the insides of his eyelids, every otherworldly glitch of the creature’s biology spiking in chains of chemical compounds too insane to comprehend. If only he could…

The idea struck him like a punch to his solar plexus, shoving him away from the sleep threatening to finally consume him. With a fevered rush of determination, he was back on his feet and stalking through medical and out the door with only the briefest nod to answer Chapel’s exasperated glance.

The first simulation failed. So did the second, but the third showed promise enough to keep McCoy busily tweaking variables and running tests until a faint beep from his console indicated the ship-wide shift rotation. His off-duty shift now complete, he quickly but carefully set his samples in stasis before dashing back to medical for the start of alpha, a secret part of his mind still ticking through prospective molecular models.

Despite his distracted state, the murmured thrum of his nursing staff told him exactly how frequently Jim had been found in Pike’s quarters during his scheduled post-op visits. He grit his teeth and tried to focus instead on mundane work of reviewing the scarce pharmacological supplies remaining in inventory while seething inwardly at the casual way Jim’s whereabouts passed around him like common hearsay, as though all those visits shouldn’t elicit the slightest paranoia or betrayal.

There was nothing else for it. A look at the ship’s crew schedule confirmed that Jim was making these visits during his off-duty hours and not in the course of his assigned shifts. Lips pressed tight, McCoy shoved down his first response to that information and used his steadiest voice to call over Chapel.

‘Whoever gets sent to Captain Pike’s quarters for his next check-up,’ he said, ‘make sure they run a damn tricorder over the Acting Captain while they’re at it to see if he’s actually slept anytime this past week, okay?’

Her nod was business-like with understanding. ‘I’ve got O’brex down for the next rotation of crew quarters but maybe you would prefer to pay that visit personally? You would be more adept at recognizing any symptoms of overwork and fatigue.’

McCoy threw her a sharp look despite her perfectly level tone. ‘Let O’brex do his job,’ he snapped. ‘Just make sure the results get forwarded to my PADD along with Pike’s.’

As ordered, McCoy’s PADD chimed from its place on the lab’s computer console some several hours or so later. Pausing to stabilize the live compound in its stasis field, he stumbled stiff-legged and sore the several steps from his lab bench, eyebrows furrowing downward as he skimmed the results of Nurse O’brex’s scans.

The short version: Jim was an idiot. Grumbling under his breath, McCoy copied a terse reply to his nursing staff ordering a series of restorative hypos for the Acting Captain to be administered when he next happened to be visiting Pike during his check-ups, with regular scans and reports on his progress until further notice. As patient care went, it was sloppy in the extreme but Jim would balk at anything more invasive; he sent the order and copied Pike’s latest results to his primary console.

There were enough changes in Pike’s blood toxicity to alter the direction of his work, change enough to banish Jim and jealousy from his thoughts in a rush of grim determination. He returned to his place at the lab bench, rapidly breaking chemical compounds back down to their original building blocks, scrutinizing his new readings as he prepared to rebuild from the beginning.

Faltering eyelids and clumsy fingers demanded another cup of coffee. The closest replicator was inconveniently, though responsibly, located in the laboratory’s common entry foyer, forcing McCoy to shuffle even further from his work. He tonelessly begged his coffee from the replicator – black, triple sweet – and was making his way back into his isolated laboratory cubicle when his PADD chimed again. Momentarily startled, he flinched and cursed as hot coffee seared the backs of his fingers; he reluctantly set down his cup and shook the burn away as he bent to read the new message.

‘Damn it, Jim,’ he hissed. Seemed the kid hadn’t wasted time paying Pike another visit. McCoy ground his teeth as he read the report, scarcely mollified by the lack of resistance shown in the delivered medications and slightly improved tricorder readings. With only the slightest stab of sadistic satisfaction, he ordered a second round of hypos for Jim’s next visit, retrieved Pike’s updated results and got the hell back to work.

Coffee and time passed, measured off in the chimes of each new result from his nurses, each one making something cruel in McCoy’s chest twist tighter, sharper even as he scoffed to himself that at least Pike was now getting what – _who_ he wanted. Even if he had lost the battle for Chris’ affection, he was still in a position to do something for his mobility and his life.

No matter what Pike chose to do with that life, McCoy was grateful that the man still had it in him at all. Surely that was better than the soporific horror of knowing that Pike was at the mercy of a psychotic Romulan and light years beyond his reach. Better to lose him to Jim than to Nero.

Surely the pain of his loss was better than the wild uncertainty of Pike’s cold sedated body on his surgical table in those first terrifying moments when he couldn’t explain the muddy water making his uniform cling to his skin, when he couldn’t name the awful discolouration of his lips. Even those questions had ceased to matter when the whole damn ship started shuddering and quaking around them and the lights pulsed red to alert their imminent destruction… but no, then again, maybe not.

Maybe this wasn’t better than that, if only because the pull of the gravity well had flung him across Pike’s body where he had held on tight to stabilize his patient, but also to feel the strength and the shape of his lover in that deafening silence that promised death. When his own heart had stuttered and stopped with panic, Pike’s unconscious pulse continued to beat steadily through to his own chest, filling him with a peace he doubted he would ever know again.

Would dying like that have been worse than this? Maybe not.

Maybe the truth wasn’t so hard to come by after all.

His work done, McCoy loaded a hypospray and stood up from the lab bench.

The ship’s corridors, he noted absently, were surprisingly quiet. The low lights of gamma shift and the faint ringing in his ears hushed him along his way to a room he had yet to see but which had been promised to him in fervent whispers, in the middles of nights more real than this back on Earth.

Promises be damned, he still needed the smug computer’s help to get there.

Thankfully, the door took his entry code without protest and admitted him smoothly to the darkened Captain’s quarters. The room’s occupant had a guest, though McCoy was relieved to see that the blue eyes that flicked in his direction happened to match her uniform.

‘Thanks, Christine. That’ll be all for now.’

She nodded wordlessly as she shouldered her medkit, but flashed him what looked too much like a knowing, encouraging smile as she slipped out, leaving him alone with the hauntingly still shape of the man seated in his mobility chair. Pike stared out his window at the sluggish crawl of stars, lips pressed to a thin grey line that neither offered nor invited apologies.

‘I’ve got an injection for you,’ McCoy announced instead, gesturing with the hypo in his hand. ‘Something to neutralize any traces of the slug’s venom in your system.’

That got Pike’s attention. His head turned slightly, red-rimmed eyes widening in the faint starlight though they aimed slightly left of where McCoy stood.

‘Thought you said you couldn’t counteract the venom.’

‘I didn’t think I could,’ he agreed. ‘But I ran simulations with some of the lesser-known counteragents, tweaked a few chemical markers in response to your… well.’ He cut himself off with a firm shake of the head before his exhaustion set him down the path of a full ramble. ‘Anyway. It’s here, if you want it.’

Pike nodded wordlessly. Taking that for all the thanks he would get, McCoy stepped forward and leaned in to administer the hypo, only to find his wrist caught in an unexpectedly steely grip.

‘Wait.’

Frozen by the trigger of Pike’s fingers tight around his wrist, McCoy drew a shaky breath before daring to speak. ‘It’s safe, you know,’ he assured roughly. ‘It’s new, but I gave this a full battery of tests before–’

‘I’m sure it’s perfect.’ Pike finally craned his head upward to look him in the eye, and McCoy’s breath caught in his throat all over again. ‘But before you do, I…’ The fine lines of his face tensed into a frown. ‘I need to say this while I know that you’ll believe me… while you’ll know I can’t possibly be lying or bullshitting or whatever excuse you’d throw in the way.’

McCoy cringed as though bracing for a blow. The tension must have shuddered all the way to his pulse beneath Pike’s fingers, judging from the way his features softened in apology.

‘Oh, Leo…’ He sighed tiredly, gaze dropping to where he brushed his thumb soothingly over the back of McCoy’s hand. ‘No, it’s nothing like that… nothing like the horrible things I’ve said to you since coming out of surgery. You can’t begin to understand how much I regret hurting you like that, after everything you did for me... after saving my life…’

‘Jim saved you,’ he interrupted stiffly.

‘He got me off that ship, but you’re the one who kept me alive after that.’ Pike’s stroking fingers closed convulsively around his hand, crushing the metacarpals in a shockingly strong, possessive grip. ‘And thinking of you was about the only thing that kept me sane enough to be worth saving in the first place.’

Pike released his hand. Stunned and lost, McCoy waited in silence while Pike stared down into his lap.

‘Those times on the Narada, when I was sure I was going to die there, I kept telling myself that if that were to happen, at least you would have Kirk. He would be good for you… better than if you were left on your own.’ The flick of his pale fingers aborted the wordless sound of protest that escaped McCoy’s throat. ‘You were so alone when I met you, and even back then I hated to see what loneliness could do to you… I wanted you to know how brilliant, how beautiful you really are…’ His eyes slid shut, then snapped open again to fix McCoy with a hard, determined stare.

‘But I didn’t always think about dying out there. Starfleet doesn’t train you to accept death so whenever I thought about getting out of there alive, I thought about how much I needed to see you again, how much I wanted to hold you and feel and taste you and never let you go again…

‘The part of me that kept me alive still wants that more than anything, but Leo…’ Pike’s gaze searched him longingly before drifting away again. ‘You’re so much more than I deserve, and I took all that selfishly. I made my move before you even got to the Academy, pushed so hard that you wouldn’t have had the chance to find someone more suitable than an aging starship captain whose career is ending just as yours is beginning. You don’t need that in your life now, not when you could be with Kirk instead. Not when I want you as much as I want you right now.’

Even though Pike’s words had struck him speechless until now, McCoy hastened to wet his lips to protest. ‘That doesn’t make any damned sense.’

Pike shot him a significant, heated stare. ‘It does, the way I want you right now,’ he said roughly. ‘If it were at all possible, the first thing I would’ve done once I got back on this ship was to claim every inch of you with my hands and mouth and cock. I’d have broken and bruised you and made sure every mark I left was soaked with my come until the only thing you’d be capable of whimpering was my name.’

McCoy swallowed with a dry, echoing click. Pike sighed, staring down at his hands.

‘I think I’ll have that hypo now, please.’

Taking a deep breath to steady the shaking of his hands, McCoy gently nudged the angle of Pike’s clenched jaw with the tips of his fingers to ease the placement of the hypospray against his jugular. Its hiss stretched loud in the silence between them, hung heavy in the air even while McCoy ran a precautionary scan with his tricorder.

‘You remember the first night we met?’ he asked softly, cautiously, setting his instruments aside.

Pike bit his lip, nodded mutely.

‘What you said to me, before you left?’

An uncertain frown creased Pike’s brow. ‘I said a lot of things,’ he muttered uncomfortably.

‘You told me, back then, that you didn’t expect me to drop to my knees for you anytime you snapped your fingers. You remember now?’

Pike shifted in his chair, keeping his eyes carefully averted. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘And I’m sorry, I never should have…’

‘Quiet.’ McCoy licked his lips, leaned in closer.

‘Snap your fingers.’

His tired cornflower eyes sparked with longing, but Pike stared hopelessly away, fingers curling their frustration around the arm of his chair.

‘Chris.’ He ducked his head, forcing his gaze. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your hands. So snap your damn fingers already.’

Pike’s hesitation lingered in the air, but McCoy watched keenly as his pale wrist flexed at the end of a gold sleeve and his long fingers brushed together. The single snapping sound cracked clean in the dark room.

McCoy sank smoothly to his knees.

‘What…’ Pike’s voice was hoarse from exertion; he coughed awkwardly before continuing. ‘What are you doing?’

He bowed his head, pressed his lips and cheek to Pike’s muscled thigh through the black cloth of his pants. ‘Whatever you want me to do,’ he said softly. ‘Captain…’

A trembling hand glanced cautiously over his hair. ‘Don’t be foolish,’ Pike sighed, not unkindly. ‘That’s over… this can’t happen anymore…’

‘Why not?’ He pressed his head up against Pike’s hovering hand as he brushed his lips further up his leg, scenting deeper into his lap.

‘I said, _don’t_.’ Fingers clenched hard at his hair, tugging him away from his goal and drawing a short hiss from McCoy’s mouth as his head was snapped back, his throat exposed.

McCoy didn’t fight against that angered hold – he basked in it, blood racing with determination and lust. ‘You still want this,’ he gasped, ‘and I still want this. Damn it, Chris, I _missed_ this, so what’s the problem?’

‘You really want to know what the problem is?’ His grip loosened in the same moment that McCoy jerked his head away, impatience clawing up his spine.

‘ _Yes_ ,’ he growled. ‘Come on, talk to me already. This time without that crap about whether you _deserve_ me or not, ‘cause let me tell you, I’m no–’

‘I wasn’t able to protect you.’ Pike spat it out hastily, like a bad taste in his mouth. ‘I wasn’t even on the damn ship… couldn’t do a damn thing except lay there and babble out every one of Earth’s defense frequencies to a madman with a doomsday device. I mean, _fuck_ ,’ he choked on a rattling laugh that chilled McCoy’s heart, ‘forget about keeping you safe out here, I helped that monster attempt genocide on the entire fucking human race…’

‘Chris, _stop_.’ Realization crept in as McCoy moved instinctively to grasp Pike’s hands as they started to tremble in his lap. ‘Damn it, Chris… you know it wasn’t your fault. There’s nothing you could’ve done once that thing was latched onto your brainstem, the toxins–’

‘I boarded his ship willingly,’ he interrupted, every careful word tight and acidic. ‘That was _my_ choice. I could have tried something else, some way to delay… instead I did the same damn thing Robau did, even knowing it got him killed…’ Pike drew himself back up with a stubborn inhalation of breath. ‘If only I’d been that lucky…’

McCoy froze, save for his hands, which squeezed Chris’ even tighter. ‘Don’t,’ he growled softly, pulse hammering. ‘Don’t you even say that.’

‘Have you seen the pictures yet?’ he asked bitterly, ignoring McCoy’s protest. ‘The views from Earth when that drill dropped into the atmosphere? Do you even understand how close Earth came to following Vulcan right into oblivion? How close you came to losing everyone and everything you love?’

McCoy shivered off the weight of all that Pike’s question encompassed. ‘How can anyone wrap their head around that kind of loss?’ he asked instead. ‘I’ve spent this last week watching Vulcans, folks far more clever than I’ll ever be, damn near lose their minds trying to reckon that one out. It can’t be done, Chris.’ For the rest, he needed a moment’s steadying breath, needed to make sure it was said sober and right. ‘And even if we had lost Earth, so long as I had you back… well, at least then I wouldn’t have lost every last person I love. I’d still have you.’

Pike lifted his head, eyes wide and startled. ‘You don’t mean that,’ he said, barely above a whisper.

‘I do.’ His own hushed reply was harder, fervent in the face of Pike’s stunned disbelief.

‘You’re exhausted… you don’t know what you’re saying…’

McCoy shook his head in feverish frustration, sagging between Pike’s thighs, weary brow dropping onto their joined hands. ‘I know I’m too damned tired to tell you anything but the truth,’ he said, plaintive and low. ‘Tell me what I need to do to make you believe me.’

A sigh feathered the exposed nape of his neck. ‘Leo…’

‘ _Tell me_ ,’ he repeated, desperate and lost. With his eyes closed, it felt like drowning. ‘Please.’

Pike’s hands shifted within his greedy grip. A wrenching ache throbbed in McCoy’s chest as Pike disentangled their hands, a painful stab that twisted into hope at the slip of fingers beneath his chin. He let Pike tilt his face up, laid himself open to the slow searching gaze of guarded blue eyes as he waited for those pinched and pale lips to finally part with words.

‘Take the uniform off.’

It was said too softly to be an order, but McCoy moved to obey as though it were the most ironclad of commands. He pulled off his boots and socks before climbing to his feet and hastily shucking the rest of his clothes until he stood naked, trembling with anticipation. Every careful sweep of Pike’s gaze over his body made his legs threaten to buckle beneath him.

After a long-drawn silence, Pike tilted his head sideways to the bed. ‘Pull the covers back,’ he said, ‘and lie down.’

He followed Pike’s directions gratefully, relieved to feel the firm familiarity of a proper mattress beneath his back. Stretching out in what he hoped was a position to his lover’s liking, he turned his head on the pillow as Pike wheeled closer to the edge of the bed. He braced his arms to hoist himself out of the chair, stilling McCoy’s motion to sit up and help with a warning glare. Instead, he watched anxiously as Pike levered his own weight from chair to bed with a low grunt of exertion that eased into a sigh as he settled down at McCoy’s side, pulling up the sheets to cover them both.

A strong arm circled his waist, drawing him tight against Pike’s fully clothed body. He hummed invitingly, slid a hand across Pike’s stomach to the hem of his shirt and winced with worry when Pike firmly pushed his hand away. ‘Don’t you want…’

‘Not right now, no.’ A kiss like an apology brushed the frown lines creasing his brow. ‘Not until you get some sleep. How many shifts has it been since you’ve had some decent rest? Food?’

McCoy’s frown deepened, the backward count trailing dimly away. ‘I have been resting,’ he argued sullenly. ‘Two shifts ago, I…’

‘The bunk behind the CMO office doesn’t count,’ Pike interrupted dryly. ‘And yes, Chapel told me about your antics playing quartermaster to our Vulcan guests so don’t bother pretending otherwise. Just…’ Another light kiss feathered against his lashes as his eyelids shuttered tiredly closed. ‘Sleep for a while first, beautiful. I’m not going anywhere.’

He hoped not. His Chris was close, and warm… perhaps a bit too warm, warm enough to possibly be running a slight fever…

‘Stop that.’ Pike lifted his hand to cover McCoy’s eyes when they flicked open again. ‘Sleep. Now.’

Beneath the cover of Pike’s hand, he closed his eyes. Darkness took him before that touch had a chance to slip away.


	3. Coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Enterprise makes its way home while McCoy struggles to do right by his injured lover and disenchanted best friend.

The Earth’s sun burned hot and unforgiving as it rose with morning over a lonely house in the desert.

Inside the house there was a room, slung low to the ground with tall windows open to the flat stretch of land outside. McCoy could sense the arid crackle of that sun-baked desert not so far away, even if he could only glimpse it in blinding pieces piercing through the brilliant green of a tree-shadowed glade that had no business being there at all.

What a strange thing, he thought, to have trees in a desert.

The house quivered and thumped to the beat of horse’s hooves pounding the land deeper into its terraformed submission. Beckoned by the sound, McCoy rose from the dining table where he had been busily dissecting a black-carapaced insect the size of a small dog; it clicked and twitched its many limbs despondently as he absently wiped his fingers clean on his pant leg and stared out the window. Two riders thundered closer to the house, and he immediately recognized the pair of chestnut bays gracefully devouring the earth. The one he knew best, Tango, cantered to an impatient halt just beyond the window, pacing and snorting in anxious anticipation.

While McCoy stood helpless, trying to discern what Tango and his rider needed, Jim dashed into the room, flushed from riding and sweating radiantly through his clinging white t-shirt. He flashed McCoy an apologetic grin before drawing back his arm and throwing an apple hard as a fastball through one of the tall windowpanes.

Broken glass rained like a wall of diamonds around McCoy’s bare feet, freezing him to the spot for fear of cutting himself as Tango stepped gingerly into the house. Chris studied him coolly from his perch in the saddle as he passed and McCoy shrank further into himself, ashamed to have forgotten that of course Chris couldn’t walk into the house on his own feet anymore.

 _Whatever will we do with you, Leo?_

He mutely shook his head, words trapped useless on his tongue. His body ached with suggestions, but Pike was too far up to reach. The powerful arms that snaked around his ribcage from behind were a relief to his frustrated lust, holding him together with freely groping hands.

 _Relax, Bones._ The full weight of a smirk poured itself as a hush into McCoy’s ear. _I’m Captain now._

Chris’ eyes flared bright with approval as Jim effortlessly peeled his shirt from his skin. He was pinned in place, held captive by proud and possessive blue eyes to the front and the slow assertive grind of a cock against his still-clothed ass. McCoy’s restless hips rolled desperately back, inviting the rough fingers that fell to the waistband of his pants. His head rolled back, throat exposed as he moaned –

He moaned, hips arching off the bed as dreaming dissolved into consciousness. As he feebly blinked his way to reality, McCoy realized that there was no sunlight to be had in this dark room, but that the warm and confident hand cradling his erect cock was indisputably present and _there_. Startled, he shot a hand out and lifted his head from the pillow, fumbling for the owner of that hand.

‘Shhh, easy there…’ Those knowing fingers abandoned his erection, closing instead around his flailing hand. ‘It’s alright…’ Pike soothed gently, coaxing his head back down to the pillow. ‘It’s me, I’m here…’

McCoy gulped in several mouthfuls of air, but his heart still thumped loud and fast against his breastbone. ‘Chris…’

‘That’s right.’ His lips curved into a wistful smile. ‘Sorry, beautiful… I didn’t mean to startle you, but you looked so good lying there next to me…’

‘Chris,’ he repeated, stronger and more urgent. ‘Please… don’t stop…’

The smile faded from his face, taken over by a hard and hungry look. ‘You want me to keep touching you? Like this?’ His fingers dragged down McCoy’s body beneath the sheet and closed again around his cock, tighter than before. McCoy groaned raggedly, thrust his hips up into Pike’s hand.

‘Yes…’ He whined softly at the back of his throat as Pike let go and lapped crudely at his palm and fingers before reaching down again. With that thin wetness on his hand, Pike stroked him slowly, gliding sinuously along his full length.

‘You’re so hard for me,’ he hushed. His hand twisted firmly, thumbing over his leaking slit. ‘So wet, too… you’re ready to come for me already, aren’t you?’

McCoy bit down hard on his lower lip, fighting to control the arousal being drawn out with every pass of Pike’s firm, perfect hand. He really was embarrassingly close, it had been too long, long enough that he wanted to savour this moment.

‘Aren’t you, beautiful?’ Pike shifted alongside him, levering himself up on his elbow and McCoy’s hair off his heated brow. ‘Tell me how much you want it…’

‘I want it,’ he breathed, hot and unashamed. ‘Want it so much… please, darling…’

A low growl vibrated from Pike’s throat. ‘You beg so pretty.’ He fisted McCoy’s cock faster, cruelly twisted his other hand in his hair; McCoy gasped as his head was wrenched back, forcing him to stare directly into Pike’s shining eyes. ‘Pretty, dirty boy… gonna come all over my hand, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, yes…’ He tangled his hands tight into the bedding, legs shifting restlessly against the bed as orgasm drew nearer. His sweat and pre-come were speeding along the relentless pace of Pike’s hand, he was so close… ‘Harder,’ he pleaded, gazing imploringly into those heated blue eyes. ‘Harder… please…’

Somehow, Pike understood the extent of what he was begging for; he squeezed his hand tighter around McCoy’s cock, but also shoved his head hard to the side. He cried out as teeth snared the exposed tendons of his strained neck, bucking hard into the adding stimulation. ‘Do it… come on, come for me…’ The rough whisper rushed over his throat but McCoy heard nothing more as he pulsed within Pike’s hand, felt his pleasure quake and drain from him in heavy waves over teasing fingers that coaxed out every last drop.

As McCoy came shakily down from his orgasm, his sluggish senses followed the gentling of Pike’s touch over him, from the stroking of his hair to the slide of fingertips through the slick remains spattering his abdomen. He could also feel the hard ridge of Pike’s erection straining through his pants and pressing tentatively against his naked hip.

‘Leo?’ Pike craned his head upright, eyes widening as McCoy settled a hand over the bulge in his pants, massaging his arousal gently before slipping up to his waistband. ‘You… you don’t have to… _oh_ …’

‘I want to,’ he murmured, gently teasing the hard flesh he found beneath the black uniform pants. ‘I want to make you feel good…’ He eased Pike out of his pants, running reverent fingertips along his throbbing length. ‘Missed you so goddamn much…’

Balancing carefully on his knees and elbows around Pike’s numbed legs, he nuzzled and licked at the silken scent of his cock, relearning the lively responses of his flesh and the low rumble of his moans as he slipped his mouth around the head and sank blissfully down. He suckled and teased with lips and tongue, coaxing a hand in between his thighs to cradle his balls; Pike’s hips spiked beneath him and he swallowed instinctively around the head of his cock, relishing the long whine of pleasure he stole from between his growling breaths.

Like McCoy, he came apart quickly, melting into a lax puddle of limbs as he moaned out his orgasm, too exhausted to thrust into McCoy’s willing mouth. Humming his own pleasure at the sharp flood of fluid over his tongue, he laved Pike’s softening length with lingering patience before gently easing his lips away from the tip, nuzzling into the sweat of a sharp hipbone as he listened to the ragged rasp of Pike’s breathing.

‘That was…’ His hoarse voice broke on a weak groan, ‘ _fuck…_ ’

‘You alright?’ McCoy rose up on his hands and knees, rapidly searching Pike’s flushed face and panting lips. As though sensing his worry, his blue eyes snapped open.

‘Don’t you dare reach for your tricorder.’ Shaky as he was, Pike dragged him down into a heavy bear hug that pressed him tight to his chest. ‘First orgasm I’ve had since we were Earth-side, gonna have to give me a moment here.’

McCoy bumped his nose into Pike’s sharp collarbone, smiling fondly at the steady thump of a heartbeat beneath his ear. ‘That’s a relief,’ he murmured.

‘What do you mean?’ The hand stroking his back stilled, and McCoy flinched at his own stupidity.

‘Nothing,’ he said stiffly, but Pike’s silence was oppressive, interrogatory. ‘Well… I’d thought… you and Jim…’

‘Oh.’ Pike’s hand moved again, slower and heavier as it dragged up his spine and closed reassuringly around the nape of his neck. ‘Oh, Leo… no, nothing like that… I’ve been advising him, nothing more. Kirk did a brilliant job in command when it really counted, but now that he’s trying to hold it together while we crawl back to Earth… it’s monotonous work, and it’s made him restless, anxious. And I can’t pretend that trying to help him through that hasn’t made me feel a bit less helpless myself.’

In retrospect, it was so obvious that McCoy groaned in mortification. ‘I’ve been such an idiot.’

‘You’ve been working yourself into a state of drop-dead exhaustion, is what you mean.’ Pike smoothed his hair over the crown of his head. ‘There’s a difference… a subtle one, because that was a recklessly bad idea, but still.’

‘Gee, thanks. And here I was starting to feel better at last.’ McCoy furrowed his brow. ‘Hold on a second, how long have I been asleep here anyway?’

‘Hmm… about eleven hours, give or take.’

‘Eleven… _fuck._ ’ He sat up abruptly, ignoring the sudden dizziness that ruined his attempt to glare down at Pike below him. ‘I missed a whole shift… and the nurses, one of them should have come to… oh, shit, did they see…?’

‘Leo, calm down.’ The stern clip of his voice cut off McCoy’s rambling panic. ‘I commed Chapel to let her know you would be off-duty until further notice. She also happens to be a smart enough woman to have called off your hounds for the time being so we could have some privacy.’

‘Chapel…’ He scrubbed a hand through his mussed hair. ‘So she knows too…’

‘Leo.’ Pike’s strained tone snatched McCoy’s attention away from his irate mumblings. ‘I hate to interrupt, but think you could help me sit up? This… isn’t really…’

He trailed off with a hard grimace, and McCoy cursed himself as he realized the cause of Pike’s discomfort, trapped as he was flat on his back while McCoy towered and ranted over him. ‘Oh, Chris… sorry, I’m so sorry, hold on…’ He shuffled backward on his knees, hastily rearranging pillows as he eased the other man into an upright position against the bulkhead’s built-in headboard. ‘Are you okay?’ He checked Pike’s pulse with two fingers inside his wrist, silently counting the beat as he checked his pupils for dilation. ‘I could get you some water, or–’

‘Or you could get your ass back here.’ Pike shook off his fingers and grabbed his arm instead, dragging McCoy into his lap and settling his arms tight around his waist. There was an uneasy tremor in his voice and limbs that McCoy tried to calm by simply letting himself be held; he settled his palms flat on the gold weave of Pike’s shirt and brushed a kiss against his temple as he waited for the heartbeats beneath his fingertips to slow to something closer to normal.

‘You said Chapel knows _too_ ,’ Pike said after a long soothing silence and McCoy drew back with a sigh.

‘Spock paid me a visit a couple days back to offer his sympathies,’ he said dryly. ‘Even if I’d been properly rested, that was one hell of a mindfuck.’

‘Spock?’ A tiny smile lit up Pike’s face. ‘Guess I shouldn’t be surprised.’

‘Guess not,’ McCoy grumbled.

That boyish grin faded. ‘Does it bother you that they know about us?’

He flushed shamefully at the accusation hidden beneath the question. ‘Does it bother you?’ he asked gruffly instead. ‘We’ve always been so careful…’

‘Only out of necessity.’ Pike ducked his head with a thoughtful frown, drawing one hand from around McCoy’s back to skim along his thigh. ‘Even if there wasn’t anything strictly against it in the regulations, any instructor-cadet relationship is seldom perceived well. Certain people could have made life very difficult for you if they found out and didn’t approve. Thankfully, Philip Boyce isn’t one of those people,’ he added with a sly smirk.

‘I damn well knew it,’ he groaned. He followed Pike’s gaze down to the hand on his thigh. ‘Jim, too, I suppose.’

‘If he knows, he didn’t get it from me.’ Pike glanced up sharply. ‘You…?’

He shook his head. ‘I assumed you…’

Another smirk pulled at Pike’s mouth, more brittle than before. ‘I doubt Kirk would have come in here professing his grand infatuation with you if he knew we were involved, do you?’

McCoy’s stomach dropped like the worst kind of space sickness. ‘He _what_?’ he gasped hoarsely. ‘He… you said you were just talking about the goddamn ship,’ he finished accusingly.

‘Mostly the ship, yeah.’ Pike shrugged, smile fading as his gaze shifted sideways. ‘He told me about your last conversation in medical… he’s had a hard time talking about much else when he has a spare moment. Think he realized as soon as the words left his mouth how little sense it made to blame you for not joining in his little attempted mutiny. But it did make him realize why it mattered so much to him that you might have done just that.’

‘Kid’s a fucking idiot,’ he muttered, adding false vitriol to his tone to cover for the lurching confusion in his gut, the wild hammering of his heart. _Jim…_

‘He’s confused,’ Pike reasoned, and McCoy choked back a bitter laugh.

‘He’s not the only one, damn it.’

‘He doesn’t know how to apologize to you,’ he continued, ignoring McCoy’s outburst. ‘And it’s not like he’d risk looking weak in front of this crew by confiding in one of them. I’ve been advising Kirk for three years now, I guess he figured he could talk to me about this as well… and I doubt it would have come up at all if he knew about us,’ he added dryly as McCoy continued to sputter with disbelief.

‘And is that how you hatched this harebrained scheme about breaking up with me and playing matchmaker?’ he snapped.

‘Well, knowing the state I’ve found myself in… and once you started staying away…’ Pike shrugged unconvincingly. ‘It’s not such a foolish idea, you know.’

‘Forget it.’ McCoy shook his head, glaring into Pike’s forcibly placid face. ‘Forget Jim, already. I’m choosing _you._ ’

Pike’s determined expression softened, but still he shook his head. ‘Leo, I’m not coming back out here with you, not with months of physiotherapy ahead of me. They’ll stick me with another desk job at Headquarters or the Academy, and you’ll–’

‘Then I’ll stay on Earth too. I’ll request a posting at Starfleet Medical, I can claim that all this shit triggered my aviaphobia and I’m not stepping foot in space again.’

‘Is that true?’ The concern in Pike’s voice was too heartfelt. McCoy scoffed, refusing to become distracted.

‘Of course not, but who cares? If you need me on Earth…’

‘I’m not the only one who needs you, though.’ A wistful smile passed briefly over Pike’s face before it faded into the image of paternal calm. ‘Look, I know it feels like everything’s slowed to a stop out here at half-impulse, but our communications with the rest of the Fleet are working just fine and trust me, things are moving fast out there. This ship is as good as Kirk’s now.’

McCoy froze, stunned mute.

‘And I’m sure you can guess who he requested for his CMO.’ His tone was teasing, but otherwise Pike watched him solemnly. ‘Now. Don’t look me in the eye and say you’d abandon Kirk and your career to play babysitter on Earth. I know you better than that. And I know you see him as more than a drinking buddy.’ He held up a hand to forestall another blistering objection. ‘For starters, why did you risk your own career to sneak him onto this ship?’

A shiver of trepidation chilled McCoy’s bare skin, but Pike’s expectant look revealed no hint of jealousy or reproach; the contrast between this calm understanding and his earlier possessiveness was unnerving, something he thought he had best investigate on a biochemical level later, but for now his shoulders sagged with defeat as he opted for the truth. ‘I couldn’t leave him behind,’ he confessed, equally blunt. ‘Grounding that kid just wasn’t right, and the look on his face…’ A frustrated groan covered the rest of the sentiment. ‘Damn it.’

‘You see now?’ Fingers combed through his hair, soothing and infuriating at the same time. ‘The two of you could be good for each other.’

‘Jim’s convinced I’ve failed as his damn nursemaid already,’ he snapped bitterly, jerking his head away from Pike’s fingers. ‘The kid hasn’t talked to me in…’ McCoy stalled, then shook off the disorientation of days; it didn’t matter anyway. ‘Well, let’s just say I wouldn’t take that request for granted.’

‘I don’t have to,’ Pike said softly. ‘It’s already been registered at HQ. I signed my approval to Kirk’s recommendations yesterday.’

McCoy snapped his head up, staring at Pike with open-mouthed shock. ‘Why the hell would you… no, fuck, why the hell would _he_ do that? What does he want with a CMO he’s been avoiding like the bubonic plague?’

‘You’ve been avoiding each other,’ Pike corrected. ‘Though I suppose all those hypos were a sweet gesture in their way,’ he added with a smirk. ‘I swear Kirk was getting so fond of the damn things, knowing where they came from, that he might have a new fetish on his hands.’

McCoy arched a disbelieving eyebrow. ‘Even if he were remotely willing to talk to me again – which I’m not saying is going to happen until it does, damn it – there’s no way Jim’s interested in me in _that_ way.’

‘I think you’re underestimating your own attractiveness,’ Pike said fondly. ‘Again.’

‘And I think you’re grossly exaggerating it. Again.’

‘And now you’re trying to change the subject.’

McCoy sighed. ‘Not working, though, is it?’

‘No, not really.’

Despite those eleven hours of sleep, McCoy felt as drained and lost as he ever had in recent days. ‘Do you want rid of me that bad?’ he asked quietly.

‘What?’ Fingers caught his downturned chin, forcing his reluctant gaze to confront Pike’s raw astonishment. ‘No. Oh, Leo, no. Of course I don’t.’

‘Then why…’ He cleared his throat around the heavy lump settling there. ‘I mean… I know I can be a pain in the ass. Jocelyn always…’

‘Stop that.’ Pike pulled him into a fierce embrace that crushed his upper arms and stifled the embarrassing sounds rising up from somewhere inside his chest. ‘That… that _woman_ didn’t deserve you. I’m not sure I do either, but so long as you’ll have me, I’m yours.’

McCoy sucked in a startled breath, thinking that his Chris had finally gone mad, to have it the wrong way around like that.

‘I’m yours,’ he repeated, as though sensing McCoy’s shock. ‘And I won’t let you go that easily, not the way she did. All I want to do is give you the freedom to have a good life out here if it’ll repay all you’ve given me already… I don’t want to tie you down if there’s a chance you could be happier with someone else…’

‘Bullshit.’ He stubbornly twisted his head around until he could speak in the space between Pike’s neck and shoulder. ‘I’m happy with _you_ , you self-sacrificing fool of a bastard.’

‘For now, yes. But once I’m stuck on Earth and you’re off on a five-year mission? Just…’ He drew back, turning to meet McCoy’s eyes. ‘Promise me you’ll think on it properly… you know,’ Pike pulled a self-deprecating face, ‘some time when you aren’t naked and on top of me.’

McCoy laughed shakily, hating that the sound was so close to a sob as he forced out an assenting nod, reluctant but too exhausted to argue further. In either case, Pike was right – they were both too emotionally wrecked to talk about this with any sort of clear perspective.

‘Thank you.’ Pike lifted his hand to his mouth, tucked a kiss into his palm. He found the cool titanium of his ring on McCoy’s smallest finger and traced it thoughtfully as though noticing it for the first time. ‘I’m surprised you kept this for me,’ he murmured distractedly. ‘After all the shit I put you through…’

His thumb and forefinger settled firmly around the edges of the ring, and McCoy’s heart leapt into his throat as he felt the cool titanium rotate against his skin. With an instinctive snarl, he snatched his hand away.

‘Don’t,’ he growled. Pike’s eyebrows flew upward and McCoy flushed at his own foolishness. Ducking his head to hide his face, he forced himself to take a last hard look at the ring on his finger, to see it as a younger Christopher Pike’s Academy ring and nothing more.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered shamefully, eyes still fixed on the ring. ‘Of course you’d want it back… here…’

‘No.’ Pike’s hand closed around his as he started to tug the ring from his finger. ‘No, keep it, please, if that’s what you want.’

‘It’s just an Academy ring,’ he mumbled defensively. ‘It’s _your_ Academy ring.’

‘That’s not what it was when I gave it to you.’

McCoy acknowledged the admission with a short nod, unable to trust the steadiness of his voice around the dizzying swell of feeling filling his throat.

‘Would you still like to keep it? Even after all this?’

Both the question and the uncertain tone in which Pike asked it made McCoy muster the strength he needed to give a proper answer. ‘Yeah,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I would… if you don’t mind.’

‘Good.’ Pike craned his head up and caught McCoy’s dry lips in a chaste yet lingering kiss. ‘I like how it looks on you,’ he whispered, pressing another kiss to his fingertips.

‘Isn’t that enough, then?’ He threw out the question in a low tone that he hoped would go unanswered, focusing instead on fumbling his way around Pike’s fragile body until he lay again at his side, heavy head finding the pillow and his ringed hand pressed reassuringly to Pike’s heartbeat.

‘For you and me, yes.’ Pike covered his hand with his own. ‘But Kirk is another matter entirely. It may not happen until we’re back on Earth, but trust me, he’s coming after you.’

He shivered with an ominous yet traitorously delectable dread. ‘I’m not one of his damned no-win scenarios,’ he muttered, relaxing slightly as Pike shuffled down in the bed to rearrange their bodies in a familiar embrace.

‘Then prove it.’ The low murmur grazed his throat. ‘If that’s what you want to do.’

The question, implied and unanswered, settled thick as the blanket that Pike drew over them both as McCoy curled into his lover’s warmth and fell into the dreamless sleep of a drowning man.


End file.
